


the fire to pass peaceful

by la_victorienne



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-08
Updated: 2009-01-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 00:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10560642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_victorienne/pseuds/la_victorienne
Summary: every winter, jack remembers.





	

Vivaldi's Four Seasons  
"Winter"

Allegro non molto  
To tremble from cold in the icy snow,  
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;  
To run, stamping one's feet every moment,  
Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold

Largo  
Before the fire to pass peaceful,  
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.

Allegro  
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling.  
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.  
We feel the chill north winds course through the home despite the locked and bolted doors...  
this is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights.

Winter always seems to happen when Jack isn’t looking, creeping up on him with stealth and ruthlessness just when he thinks he’s hit the good days of autumn. He’ll walk outside expecting crisp, cool air and the smell of leaf dust that never fails to make him smile, and all he’ll get is the smell of winter all around, like a knife in his gut and cold fingers brushing through his hair – not a disappointment, by any means, but always a surprise.

But just because he’s unprepared for winter doesn’t mean he doesn’t like it; on the contrary. The chill and snow and damp of winter remind him of things he’s forgotten, each year a new resurfacing memory, in an endless cycle of reminiscence he hopes continues for all of eternity – wherever he is. Some winters he remembers the winds of Boeshane, or the feel of the sand beneath his bare feet, or the cold soup his mother used to make when the days were so unbearably warm and oppressive. Some winters he dwells entirely on the time he had with Estelle, sitting comfortably by the fire, daring to kiss her with reckless abandon even though her father was in just the other room and could walk in any moment. Some winters he even allows himself to think about the Doctor, about the night the two of them stood outside on a nameless planet while Rose was sleeping softly and Jack felt closer to an unfathomable god and the limitless universe than he’d ever felt before or since.

But not this one.

This winter, Jack steps outside and the cold air brings back a memory that should be recent, but that has faded after two thousand years in the ground, a memory of Ianto last year, just as he and Jack were beginning to understand each other, after cannibals and fairies and Lisa, in the snow on the Plass. Ianto had his head tilted back and his mouth open, tongue out, catching snowflakes that melted in an instant, arms thrown wide and uncaring. Jack remembers coming up the lift with a smirk on his face, prepared to make some impossibly smug and incredibly crude remark, until he realized that Ianto, for the first time in weeks, was smiling, clearly and without shame.

They kissed for the first time that night, the snow falling all around them and Jack’s mind wiped clear of any previous lovers’ memory. Ianto was quiet, but unquestionably alive, and clearly beginning to heal from everything they’d been through over the past few months, and Jack could be nothing but proud of him.

It wasn’t long after that Suzie resurfaced, this time a threat needing to be eliminated for good, and Ianto felt daring enough to make the first move, a gesture Jack both admired and appreciated. But there was something about their kiss in the snow that was so much more innocent and admirable than the sex they’d had with the stopwatch, and Jack knows for a fact that in another few centuries’ time, this memory will surface again in an oncoming winter wind as his only connection to Ianto, his only coherent illustration of their relationship. Brief and beautiful, windswept and warm – it is not by any means the only memory he wants to keep, but he knows it is the one he _will_ keep.

And as he turns toward the road that will take him to Ianto’s flat, where he is having dinner, he thinks to himself that it is because that cold night was a night of love, and that is all Jack wants to remember as he soldiers through his oncoming days.


End file.
